big data
Big Data, Big Responsibility
Stewart Langdown MSLL, business director at Mackwell, discusses the
challenges we face with Big Data and the opportunities that lie ahead.
S
ince the launch of the world
wide web to the wider
public on 6th August 1991
we started on a journey
of creating the first online
storage of data; albeit this data was a
few bytes stored on a PC somewhere
on a remote server. Computers of
course have been with us for many
years, with the first commercial
computers being available in the
1950’s, so we have been digitising
data for over 60 years.
36 | August 2017
However, it’s the online storage
and presence that I want to
discuss and how we can relate this
to the real world so far as buildings
are concerned. I’m not interested
in the Peta bytes of data uploaded
to Facebook and YouTube each
day, but the useful data that tells
us how much energy we are using,
how the space is being used and,
of interest to Mackwell, whether
your emergency lighting is safe
and compliant.
Data is responsibility
Data is information and
information can be useful, but let’s
not kid ourselves, data for data’s
sake achieves nothing if you’re not
going to act on that information.
An alarm is triggered and a fault
found. How is this fault reviewed?
What procedures do you have in
place to address that challenge
and how do you provide an audit
trail to confirm you’ve acted? Data,
means that if you record it then